The mouse scroll wheel does control zoom, despite the mouse not being the preferred interface. I haven't figured out what the keyboard shortcut it is, but the mouse wheel lets you pull pretty far back.

The mouse scroll wheel does control zoom, despite the mouse not being the preferred interface. I haven't figured out what the keyboard shortcut it is, but the mouse wheel lets you pull pretty far back.

Cool, thanks! Kinda gotten used to not using the mouse for ship sailing at all, so didn't play with the wheel at all. I should re-read the manual again and see what else I'm missing.

I put in about two hours with it last night (though I only meant to do an hour). I just went right into a game off the main menu, didn't go back out and change difficulty or anything, since I never got around to playing the original (I know, I know, that's why I bought the limited version).

So far, I'm liking everything. The sailing is easy, especially if you played Sea Dogs. I like the huge size of the world. Wooing the daughters is entertaining, and the dancing is fun, I think. The hand gestures are subtle, and sometimes come very quickly, but you can always watch the key flashes. I've already got two attractive ones on the line, and convinced them to give me a map of Spanish settlements and a set of dueling swords.

What I'm not liking is the lack of difficulty. Since I haven't played before, I'm not sure if this is normal for the early game, or a result of playing on easy, but I haven't lost a fight, land or sea, yet. At one point, I was sailing around with my starting sloop, and ran into a Spanish treasure galleon. Just for kicks, I attacked her, fully expecting to be sunk. Instead, I took her down with no problem. A bit later, I found one of the main pirates sailing around in his war galleon. I attacked with my sloop, and took him down too without much problem. I just moved on to my second crew, and upgraded to journeyman, so I'll try that for a bit, and if it's still this easy, I'm upping the difficulty.

You're probably going to find Journeyman too easy as well. I started to feel a bit of pain at Adventurer (the next difficulty level up), the biggest difference I see being that crew from captured ships rarely join me and it's hard to find crew to recruit outside of my home ports. The fencing and dancing are still quite winnable.

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It was this moment that took the movie from being a little ho-hum to “holy shit, did that shark just eat a plane!?”

I didn't start feeling challenged consistently until I accepted "Rogue Captain" difficulty at my last divide plunder. I did a campaign of about 13 months at Rogue difficulty, and let me tell you, it makes a world of difference! Some of the changes at Rogue level:

- No convenient land maps with landmarks for finding quest locations and treasures. I don't remember if this went away at adventure level, but it makes things a little more difficult (and frustrating). You still can reference the treasure or quest map, but when you select map while on land, it will just show the entire land mass without all of the helpful landmarks.

- Ship captains are significantly more capable at sailing and using their special canon shots during sea battles. You probably won't look at a sloop of war as easy prey ever again.

- Dueling becomes much harder, and you can no longer just spam attack buttons and consistently win. I had my first losses against Blackbeard and the baron at this level. The keypad flashing help is gone.

- Dancing is a little harder, but mainly because you have to watch her hands since the keypad flashing help is gone.

- Crew morale goes south much faster.

- Attacking towns is still pretty easy, I don't think that's one of the shining hallmarks of this game. You can still split off a small group, keep the main enemy force engaged, and then send your small group to the gates.

- My pirate is 30 years old, and he's already been downgraded to fair health! What happened to all the old, crusty pirates still being badasses?

- The plunder split is very nice at rogue captain level.

- The wind and weather effects seem to impact your sailing more at this level.

- Don't expect to sail into a 2 ship fight with your flagship and steamroll them like in the other difficulty levels. The small, fast sloops of war will sail around you hammering you with their 12 guns, while the merchant ship will hang off and fire away at you. It's still definitely doable, it's just not the cakewalk it was at the lower levels.

I played until about 4am last night, this is another Sid game that makes me completely lose track of time.

Can someone please comment on the quality of the manual. I see someone mentioned "page 134", which amazes me that any game ships with a manual with at least that many pages anymore. Knowing Sid's history of great manuals, does this one fall into that category?

I'm gonna get this one, probably when it hits the $29 mark. (I'm betting gogamer won't take long to sell it at that price).

I really like the difficulty levels, finding your sweet spot is easy. If the game you're playing isn't difficult enough, just boost it up when you divide the spoils. You then get used to the next difficulty level and can bump it up again after that.

I remember my pirate in the original game retiring due to ill health and old age many times. I always just brought him back out of retirement and continued looking for the family members and hidden treasure. Never seemed to bother him any, except for being more easily wounded or whatnot by the quicker, younger pirates.

Has anyone gotten the limited edition version of the game? I ordered it from EB about a week ago, and I just read a post on their website about someone who is complaining that the limited edition is screwed up, asking to insert the correct disk and whatnot when there is only one disk. (could that sentence have been any longer???)

I am getting anxious thinking about the trouble I will have if the guy is right, and not just a confused moron.

I really want to play some Pirates! and relive my youth.

Also, I'm hoping if this does well, he'll go and do a remake of Covert Action or that Samurai game of his. I loved both of those games just as much as Pirates!.

Has anyone gotten the limited edition version of the game? I ordered it from EB about a week ago, and I just read a post on their website about someone who is complaining that the limited edition is screwed up, asking to insert the correct disk and whatnot when there is only one disk.

I've got it. It's on DVD and I've had zero problems with it. I found it very interesting that there was no price difference between the limited and regular versions, just a difference in media and contents.

I agree - it would be most excellent if Covert Action and/or Sword of the Samurai got similar treatment. :wink:

Thanks MonkeyFinger, I can now relax about the whole "DVD version is screwed up!" thing. I pretty much figured it couldn't be true anyway, but now I feel better.

Sword of the Samurai! That is it! That was the name of the game. I loved that. I played it to death. One time, I actually managed to make it to become Shogun in my original Samurai's lifetime. That made me feel like I had accomplished something. Of course, it involved lots of low-down dirty tricks.

I also used to listen to the soundtrack for Last of the Mohicans while playing it. Believe it or not, it fit rather well...

I got the DVD version too and it works fine. The making of the video was kind of weak. Don't forget to explore the disk. There are a lot of extras.

I must revise my impression of the game. My inital impression was one of Gaming Lite. Basically several easy game play segments placed in an attractive package. However I've gotten more hooked on it. The quest and story really bring this game alive and add an addicitive quality to it.

Thanks MonkeyFinger, I can now relax about the whole "DVD version is screwed up!" thing. I pretty much figured it couldn't be true anyway, but now I feel better.

Sword of the Samurai! That is it! That was the name of the game. I loved that. I played it to death. One time, I actually managed to make it to become Shogun in my original Samurai's lifetime. That made me feel like I had accomplished something. Of course, it involved lots of low-down dirty tricks.

I also used to listen to the soundtrack for Last of the Mohicans while playing it. Believe it or not, it fit rather well...

Man, sword of the samurai was one of the forgotten greats in gaming. That game was, in design, so far ahead of its time it's rediculous. Loved that game.

Hijack over.

s

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And when he had failed to find these boons in things whose laws are known and measurable, they told him he lacked imagination, and was immature because he preferred dream-illusions to the illusions of our physical creation

I must revise my impression of the game. My inital impression was one of Gaming Lite. Basically several easy game play segments placed in an attractive package. However I've gotten more hooked on it. The quest and story really bring this game alive and add an addicitive quality to it.

Perfect way to describe the game. My initial impression too was that this was kind of a simple game, there wasn't much too it. But, the addictivness of the gameplay combined with the questing system really pulls it all into a juicy package of gaming goodness.

I put a bunch more hours into it, and this thing's still really easy. I'm on the third difficulty level, and so far I've taken out half of the top ten pirates list, including the top five, without even trying hard. I think this crew's almost had it, so I'll be moving up to another difficulty level, and maybe it'll get hard then. I still like it, but I miss the feeling that Sea Dogs gave me when I came upon a ship I knew outclassed me, and being really nervous that I wouldn't be able to get out of reach of her guns before she ripped me apart. In Pirates, I can pretty much take on anything and win with no trouble.

I put a bunch more hours into it, and this thing's still really easy. I'm on the third difficulty level, and so far I've taken out half of the top ten pirates list, including the top five, without even trying hard. I think this crew's almost had it, so I'll be moving up to another difficulty level, and maybe it'll get hard then. I still like it, but I miss the feeling that Sea Dogs gave me when I came upon a ship I knew outclassed me, and being really nervous that I wouldn't be able to get out of reach of her guns before she ripped me apart. In Pirates, I can pretty much take on anything and win with no trouble.

I don't think it starts to get challenging until the 4th difficulty level. On "Rogue Captain" level it's not terribly hard, but it's a noticable ramp up in diffculty. The AI ship captains are much better at that level, which makes the ship battles exciting and more fun imo. Swordplay is harder, finding treasure and quest locations is tougher without the nice land maps, crew morale gets bad much quicker if you're not pulling in new loot frequently.

Its worth noting that you won't really feel the true difficulty hit till you start a new game at that level. If you ramp up as you go, you still have the benefit of all of your ranks, crew members, and items. These things are harder to obtain at higher difficulties and really help a lot. Starting from scratch at Adventurer or Rogue is going to be significantly tougher than working your way up during a succesful campaign.

Fencing Combat has three attacks and three blocks, plus a taunt key. It's fairly simplistic but at harder difficulties requires a keen eye and some level of reflexes.

The 'story' is that you need to rescue four members of your immediate family who were kidnapped and cast into slavery by the evil Marquis Montalban when you were 8 years old. So if you are looking for plot, each game allows you to do anything you want, but you are kinda supposed to be hunting Baron Raymondo for information on where each of your family members are and then avenge them by raiding Marquis Montalban's secret hideout. There are also hidden treasures and famous pirates to battle, as well as the Lost City of the Incas to find and the SPanish Treasure Fleet to hunt down and plunder.

All of this stuff is generated random each game, so even though the characters are the same, it never works identically.

You can also adopt a political agenda and depending on which era you play try to push back the development of one of the opposing national empires while spreading your own. There's really a lot of flexibility in terms of how you want to spend your pirate's limited lifespan. Eventually he is forced to retire and given a ranking. And in that sense you can compete against your own best scores.

You know...I should still have my cloth map from the original lying around here somewhere...

While it's not a cloth map (I do remember that one!), the included map is much nicer than most of the cheap stuff that comes with games now. The paper is heavier, and the map is colored to look like an old treasure map...nice touch considering games are now starting to ship without manuals.

I have fond memories of Pirates! on my C-64, but I am considering holding off on the xbox version of this one. I just don't like the idea of a game that requires a bunch of timed keypad presses, and I've heard that the xbox sword-fighting will be tuned for the console (which, arguably, the mini-games will be a better fit for).

Can anyone comment on the sailing and ship-to-ship interface? Is it mouse-driven or keyboard driven?

I have fond memories of Pirates! on my C-64, but I am considering holding off on the xbox version of this one. I just don't like the idea of a game that requires a bunch of timed keypad presses, and I've heard that the xbox sword-fighting will be tuned for the console (which, arguably, the mini-games will be a better fit for).

Can anyone comment on the sailing and ship-to-ship interface? Is it mouse-driven or keyboard driven?

It's all controlled off the number pad. It plays really well, but it's definitely a game that's a good fit for the console too, control wise.

s

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And when he had failed to find these boons in things whose laws are known and measurable, they told him he lacked imagination, and was immature because he preferred dream-illusions to the illusions of our physical creation